I love setting up a central area for our theme focus and my daughter loves it too. I gather our toys and books together and display them the night before we begin our unit. It helps to draw her in and get her excited about our learning time together. It was VERY simple this time and she helped me create it. She has tons of dog and cat stuffed animals so I had her choose which ones she thought looked most like Eloise, Baxter and the kittens from the book.

We also let many other doggies and kitties come along, as well as our collection of cat and dog books. This is a shot of our “extras” basket.

Instead of sorting in folders for each day, I put together a binder. I put the activities in the order I wanted her to do them, but we went out of order on some!

Day One

We began by reading the book, which is a big time favorite! We then went on to our first activity, sorting baby and adult animals.

We then made patterns using images of kittens, Eloise and Baxter…

Finally, we worked on “D is for…”

Day Two

We began with, the graphing dogs. She loved this!!

We did the character connection about being grateful, but no photos!

Then she did the story problems, but I also didn’t get a photo of her! She loved this, she is very into math right now.

Finally we used the “Describe a Basset Hound” page and had lots of laughs together. During this we also searched online for other pictures of Basset Hounds and she decided she NEEEEDS a “Basket” Hound because they are soooooo cuuuute.

We completed another Kindergarten Literature Unit, A Color of His Own, recently. It was SO nice to be back to learning this way, we both love it. We haven’t done a literature unit since before my husband’s accident over three months ago!

I love setting up a central area for our theme focus and my daughter loves it too. I gather our toys and books together and display them the night before we begin our unit. It helps to draw her in and get her excited about our learning time together. I usually borrow books from the library but didn’t have time to get there so we used the only two chameleon books we had.

We also didn’t have any actual chameleon toys, so since they are a part of the lizard family we invited all of her lizards to join us! She is a BIG lizard fan so this was very exciting for her!

Instead of sorting in folders for each day, I put together a binder.

I put the activities in the order I wanted to do them and we just did what we wanted to do each day. I didn’t stress out over how many activities we got done, we just did whatever worked. you’ll see below we finished the unit after a total of 7 different days working together.

This was a REALLY fun unit, we both loved it!

Day One

We began by reading the book, which is a favorite so she enjoyed reading. We then went on to our first activity, sorting plants and animals from the story.

Next we did the “What Begins with C?” activity. She loves to cut and decorate so this took awhile!

That was it for day one, she took so long on those two activities, we ran out of time. I sued to get stressed and would rush my kids. Now I just try to relax and let them take their time. We just add days to the unit if needed!

Day Two

Again, we read the book. This time we discussed the friend the chameleon made near the end. We then did the character connection talking about being a good friend.

She then put the story in order in our pocket chart!

Next we read the mini book and used a toy lemon and “chameleon” to practice our position words!

We are now using these alongside of our new You Can Read Word Family printables. She is learning 4 new sight words and one word family per week now. We will slow down if she needs to, but this seems to be just right for her at this time.

Here’s the photo recap of what I captured…

She loves BINGO! This time we added the cube in from the roll and graph activity. We rolled and then marked our BINGO boards!

Now that we are mostly settled into our new house, I wanted to get back on the monthly homeschool wrap-up wagon! This post will share our learning that happened during January. We are in the middle of my son’s competitive gymnastics season so we take some days off here and there and then make them up when the season is over. We didn’t have a full four weeks of school, but close!

You can see our detailed curriculum posts by clicking on the graphics below.

{disclaimer ~ affiliate links are used}

All Together School

This is our group shot from the beginning of the year, they’ve already changed SO much! Especially my biggest boy!

We have a wide grade and age range between our three kids, but I am thrilled to say that we have found quite a few subjects to learn all together!

We do the following subjects all together, and I will share mini updates below!

Mystery of History

Our Mystery of History time together continues to be a favorite of mine. We do lessons 3 days a week, and then work on our timeline and review on the 4th day.

At the end of January we had completed through week 13, lesson 39. We obviously got behind this year and will get as far as we can and continue on with volume 1 next year if needed and then move on to volume 2.

One of the highlights of the month was watching corresponding What’s in the Bible DVDs as we went through certain lessons! The kids LOVED this and it helped so much!

As I went to get links for this post I noticed they have an incredible sale going on for the DVDs right now {ends 2/15/15}!

U.S. History ~ William Penn

We use YWAM’s Heroes of History as our U.S. History foundation. It is novel based and a perfect fit for us. We finished John Smith and are in the middle of William Penn now. We are all loving this particular book since we lived in Pennsylvania for the past 10 years before moving! This is a GREAT book.

We read together 3 times per week at least, and the kids all get to play with something quietly while we read.

Even the dog often joins us for reading time.

World Geography

We continue to use the book Passport to the World to go through countries and languages from around the world. Such a simple thing we do twice a week but we are all learning and remembering so much! The book is a launch for many discussions. We are almost done with the entire book and will move onto Children’s Atlas of God’s World next to do the same thing ~ just read and learn together!

7th Grade

PacMan is almost entirely independent this year. I teach him writing and Who is God? and the rest he does independently.

Daddy continues to be in charge of overseeing Pac’s science {Apologia General Science}! This is so great for me {the mom who dislikes teaching science}. Pac continues to set up, and clean up his experiments on his own, it is wonderful! He even invites his sister to sit in when he can!

We continue to slowly creep along with writing {Write Shop 1} in the afternoon together, and it continues to be a struggle. I just don’t like teaching writing. Love the curriculum, it’s just me.

He is doing really well with Teaching Textbooks Pre Algebra. Daddy oversees this too and helps when needed.

We have been bad with reading lately and he just picked up his first novel since we moved, he is currently reading The Hiding Place.

3rd Grade

Krash spends a lot of time in the gym, and his gymnastics team has many homeschooled kids. There are homeschool gym hours 3 days per week so we get a majority of his schooling done on his two non-gym days each week. He also schools with us on the other three days, but his most intense days are Tuesday and Thursday here at home.

Daddy has taken over a few subjects with Krash since our move ~ Life of Fred Math {they are working on book C right now}, Vocabulary, Science, and math. He is doing well with Teaching Textbooks Math 4, but we have made one change for him. Daddy now goes over the lesson in the textbook with K each morning before he goes to the computer. He needs this extra walk through most morning just to clear his brain and help him focus.

We continue with Write Shop D for writing and it is going well. Still not my favorite thing to teach but we are moving along.

We are almost through First Language Lessons {starting with book 1 and moving quickly} to work on oral comprehension and solid grammar skills. In addition to this he is using Growing with Grammar 2 which I am loving. I like to do both with him since one is auditory and one is a written workbook style.

All About Spelling continues to work really well for him. We are well into level 3, and he is really absorbing the rules. A recent change we made was putting the board on our table instead of propped up. he likes this SO much better!

Krash has been joining in with Ladybug for calendar time for some review. He is a good helper to her. He has a modified Calendar Notebook again, and is working on a few simple things each day. I plan to write a post soon sharing exactly what he and Ladybug are doing with calendar these days!

Kindergarten

I do specific posts for much of Ladybug’s Kindergarten. Here’s direct links to the posts showing her in action during January {click on the graphic to see the posts}.

She also has other Kindergarten fun that we don’t blog specifically about, and I will include in the wrap up posts here!

We continue to use and enjoy Logic of English Foundations A. Her progress is just where I want it to be. She calls it “dragon school” because of the dragon on the front of the book. She enjoys the lessons and does really well. It has been a fabulous foundation in phonics for her.

A new aspect of our homeschool is read aloud time with Daddy each afternoon. Since my husband is now home more, he reads her a stack of books each day after lunch. They both love this time and I feel so blessed to have him home able to do this!

We are now using these alongside of our new You Can Read Word Family printables. She is learning 4 new sight words and one word family per week now. We will slow down if she needs to, but this seems to be just right for her at this time.

Here’s the photo recap of what I captured…

For now, her sight word caterpillar is in her small pocket chart. She likes playing with her words quite often so they are better this way for her!

Fun work with the Bitsboard app. Here’s the basics of how to use Bitsboard and the You Can Read word lists {it’s for Apple only} ~ Download Bitsboard app {free}, open Bitsboard, select "Catalog" over on the right, it’s blue at the top, select "Shared," type www.1plus1plus1equasl1.net in the search area on the top right. Scroll until you find the units you’re looking for.